Family Man

I'm continuing a conversation I've started with Charles Darwin (don't be hoodwinked by the name, he's a theist). To summarize the discussion so far, CD claims that morality comes from God. However, he seems to have difficulties coming up with predictions from the real world that confirms his hypothesis. I pointed out that, being a universal god, everyone everywhere at everytime in every society should have the same sense of moralty. CD said no, societies become corrupted, which explains the variation. That seems to imply that societies started out uncorrupted, then became corrupted. No, says CD, societies started out corrupted. Finally I pointed out, there are cases where societies went from what us moderns would view as immoral acts, such as slavery, to the moral act of condemning slavery -- a rather strange situation if morality comes from God. CD had no response to this.

To date, CD has not presented any evidence or reasoning to support his claim that morality comes from God or that societal differences in morality is due to corruption.

He then changed tack and made this claim about the "inner feeling" we have about morality.

I'll pick it up from here.

First, CD, simply "knowing" something is not an indication that something "comes from God." We all know that 2 + 2 = 4, and there is no "post-modern feeling of relativism in our heart" about that either. Is it surprising that we condemn people who kill for profit, but exonerate those that act in self-defense when that flows naturally from principles that we're taught from birth?

Worse, you seem not to recognize the dagger through the heart that morally ambiguous situations are to your current hypothesis. I'll certainly agree with you that morality is a complex and difficult subject -- for humans. For God, however, morally ambiguous situations ought to be a snap. If our "inner feelings" that indicate morality were, in essence, messages from God, we shouldn't have any morally ambiguous situations. We should always have that "righteous feeling". But, in fact, we often do have "post-modern of feelings of relativism in our heart" about complex moral situations. That indicates a human source for morality, not a divine one.

Basically, the problem you have is this. To claim divine status for our moral feelings, you have to show how our moral feelings are universal. Your latest attempts fails because there is a perfectly naturalistic explanation for the feelings you proclaim as evidence, and there is no universality behind those feelings. In short, your hypothesis appears to be false.

DMB

I wonder how CD knows about my inner feelings. I think the arguments he has posted in GRD all tend to show that he has very little conception of how other people think and feel. He tries to make sense of the world on the basis of his own inner workings. I suppose we all do this to a degree, but he takes it further than most.